October 24th, 2016
GSDI 15 Welcomes Dr Tso-Chien Pan to Keynote on Disaster Management

Each Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI) Conference brings together engaging speakers and specialists from around the world to explore the challenges and innovations related to increasing access to and use of geospatial data. The overall theme of the 15th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure World Conference (GSDI 15), set for 29 November to 2 December, 2016 in Taipei, Taiwan, is “Spatial Enablement in the Smart Homeland.” It will focus on three principle sectors – Smart Disaster Prevention, Smart Transportation, and Smart Cities.

GSDI is pleased to have on board Dr Tso-Chien Pan, Executive Director and Professor at the Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management (ICRM) of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, as a keynote speaker, rounding out GSDI 15’s focus on disaster management. Prof Pan is a much sought-after engineering expert locally and internationally for his knowledge in protecting infrastructure from natural and man-made disasters. Currently, he spearheads ICRM’s work investigating the effects of natural and man-made disasters on society.  Prof. Pan’s research interests include damage assessment of buildings subjected to dynamic loading and seismic hazard, vulnerability and risk assessments. He now is serving the international engineering profession as Director of the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI), International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE), and he was a Director of the Executive Committee of the IAEE from 2004 to 2008.

Dr Pan joins the previously announced Keynote Speakers listed below:

• Dr Winnie Tang, Chairman of Esri China (Hong Kong) Ltd.
• Dr Tien-Yin Chou, President of TADPI and Professor at Feng Chia University, Taiwan
• Prof Dr Menno-Jan Kraak, President of the International Cartographic Association (ICA)
• Mr Ivan DeLoatch, Executive Director of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Secretariat at USGS, USA
• Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
• Ed Parsons, Geotechnologist at Google, Inc.
• Dr Vernon Singhroy, Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation, Natural Resources Canada
• Dr Dewayany Sutrisno, Senior Research Professor, Geomatics Research Center of the Indonesian National Coordinating Agency for Geospatial Information (BIG)
• Prof Dr Hidenori Tamagawa, Department of Urban System Science, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan
• Dr Satoshi Sekiguchi, Director-General of the Division of Information Technology and Human Factors, Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan

The latest information on GSDI 15 is available from the conference website at http://gsdi15.org.tw, and

registration is open at http://gsdi15.org.tw/Registration.  For further information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].